Wednesday, August 30, 2017

The next day, we got up at a jet-lagged reasonable time and had breakfast and then John came by to meet me and he and I headed out for a adventure while the girls decided to do girly things closer to where we were staying.

We first went to the Singapore Maritime Museum.

With over 100,000 ships visiting every year, it's the busiest port on the world and Singapore's fortune depends upon its maritime trade.

The Maritime Museum is very focused on introducing Singaporeans to maritime jobs and many flyers, books, and pamphlets, free to all, were in prominent display and talked of opportunities in the shipping industry.

Cargo containers are indeed a big deal.

Begun by the British who acquired it from its former Malaysian rulers and set it up as a free port city, its continued to grow in size and influence. As a free trade port with no duty the British had to make their money to operate the colony somewhere so they made it up with opium.

Yep, the drug trade isn't a bad thing when the government is in charge of it.

Lot of interesting storyboards and videos detailed the changes in Singapore's ports.

The highlight of the museum is a ship's bridge simulator where you can handle maneuvering a ship in various conditions.

Happy to report there were no collisions even in a very crowded shipping channel.

Then we had a Tex-Mex lunch on a paddle-wheel steamboat that had been turned into a floating restaurant.

Yes, a Singaporean had acquired a US paddleboat, brought her over here and rhen turned it into a Tex-Mex restaurant.

The food wasn't bad but it was really surreal to be having a Tex-Mex-style burger and fries on a riverboat in Singapore harbor delivered by hospitable Indian waiters. It seemed rather out of place.